ALTHOUGH TRANSGENDER PEOPLE account for about 1% of the overall population, this particular community has been subjected to an outsized amount of moral panic in recent years.

Anti-trans sentiment has bled into many areas of public conversation, often echoing the homophobic tropes of the late 20th century. Over the last couple of decades, we’ve seen outdated societal attitudes towards gay, lesbian and bisexual people abandoned, to the point where it’s widely accepted that these misconceptions are wildly inappropriate.

Yet, those same outdated ideas that there’s an innate deviance, predatory nature or underlying mental illness behind being gay or lesbian, have resurfaced and are now being targeted towards trans, intersex and non-binary people.

To complicate things further, there’s a new layer of amplification in the age of social media, which means that unfiltered, unmoderated and factually inaccurate prejudices can spread like wildfire.

This new wave of transphobia seeks to quash any involvement that trans and gender non-conforming individuals could hope to have in the public sphere.

Transgender Cuban martial arts athlete Ely Malik Reyes trains at a gym in Regla, Cuba. Reyes became the first trans athlete to officially compete in a Cuban league. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

We’ve seen it in the UK after last year’s Supreme Court ruling, whereby the presence of transgender people in public single-sex bathrooms has been the subject of scrutiny.

These spaces must, from next month, only be used based on a person’s sex recorded at birth, not the gender they now identify as. Changes like these have a knock-on effect for anyone who doesn’t meet arbitrary standards of femininity.

The question of sport

We’ve also seen this moral panic rear its head in conversations about trans inclusion in sports in recent years. This was demonstrated recently in the United States Irish dancing circuit. The sport’s governing body, Coimisiún Le Rincí Gaelacha (CLRG), was threatened with legal action from the Attorney General of the State of Florida.

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier is against trans athletes competing in sports, including Irish Dancing. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

As hostilities grow towards transgender people under Trump’s administration, Dublin-based CLRG and the Irish Dance Teachers’ Association of North America (ITDANA)........

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